Today was a great day! The weather was excellent with calm waters, clouds thin and high in the sky, a steady current flow, breeze a good boat and captain and the snapper were biting but sadly, not very aggressively.

Anyway, here’s the scoop… this morning, Dad and I woke up at about 710am to get ready to go fishing… I still couldn’t find my point and shoot camera and just grabbed my big camera bag with the SLR in it and off we went. We got to the Russell wharf at 8am and there was Carl standing there outside the information counter which was just opening wearing a jet black shirt that had the lettering “4 reel” charters, Carl.

It must’ve taken about 15-20 minutes to get out from the wharf to the first fishing spot where the lines went down with halves of “salty dog” brand salted pilchards as bait, on what were probably 5/0 circle hooks. I would guess they were about 4x strong… this meant we would be into some serious fish… He passed Dad a pretty big rod and the shimano reel was loaded up with 20kg mono while the set he passed to me had 10kg mono on it. I guess he figured it would suit me better… Which it did, I can’t exactly hold onto a huge rod and reel set up for a really long time, especially if its heavy (which this was).

Carl warmed us up on some smaller snapper in the 30-40cm range, which provided a little bit of fun as the takes were very enthusiastic and they would hook virtually themselves. Sadly, instead of taking up the slack when the fish grabbed the bait, Dad kept jerking the rod so the hook would just pop out of the fish’s mouth instead of smoothly into the fish’s lip. As a result, at the first spot, Dad and I caught 4 fish between the 2 of us.

We soon drifted past the snapper school, or it moved off, and we changed spot and began to search for bigger fish. We came across a huge bait school and there were many other boats around it, all with their lines down, but there was no action. There was the odd 45cm fish being picked up but nothing huge… we motored further up current and set up a drift… while Dad, Gary and I set halves of pilchards and dragged them along just above the bottom, Carl jigged for baitfish and he is good at it… before we knew it, the tank at the back of the boat was full of scad. At this spot, dad caught a sweep, which is a trash fish and I managed a snapper or 2, which we released. Since the live-well was full, it was time to move on. I think I can attribute the rapid catch rate of bait to Carl’s jigging skills and the speed at which he unhooks the bait, with a spoon!

Spot 3… we had some big hits and made good on one of them… landing a good sized snapper that went probably 8 lbs and it was bright reddish brown in colour. Such a beautiful fish…it was destined for the dinner table- for sure! We had the usual baby snappers around 35cm… On Carl’s boat, legal sized snapper are 32cm even though the national minimum size is 27cm, simply because a 27cm snapper doesn’t give you very much of a feed while a 32cm fish does.

The current began to pick up at around 1130 so we moved over to yet another spot. From here, I could see kingfish smashing baitschools, leaping out of the water and chasing bait as it tried so desperately to escape the huge mouth and empty stomach, but it was not to be, the frenzy continued on and on. Down went the anchor, and the sinkers, circle hooks and cut pilchard or scad, which had not survived in the live-well. They were chopped in half or rigged whole and lowered to the bottom. Here is where we had more big hits and as noon approached, the live bait came out and I’m not very good at live bait but we managed our second big snapper of the day, which weighed in at about 9-10lbs which took a live scad. Before I knew it we had to head back to the dock… at least we had all caught lots of fish… on this bottom where it had few corals and practically nothing that could cut your line, I was kicking myself because I would have liked to have one of my own light tackle sets in my hands which would have enabled me to extract more fun out of each fish, and I wouldn’t have missed so many bites since I’m used to fishing with light instead of heavy tackle.

I’m still stoked about this afternoon’s fishing… all the fish were legal sized, with a 2 biggies and other lost big fish… it was really fun! Even Dad who doesn’t fish talked and talked and talked about it. We kept one fairly small snapper that went 37cm because we were fishing over about 40 meters of water and dad wound him up in a hurry so his swim bladder was bloated… into the box he went, along with the 2 biggies… Fishing today was a good reminder that there are many interesting fish in the sea worth preserving. I’ve never caught a snapper that had blue green spots on its body, and these ones did, well maybe not the big ones but the small ones did… and they are extremely pretty fish! We even saw various pods of dolphins on the way out to fishing [took lots of pictures] and on the way back without even trying, we even saw sea birds like gulls and gannets, the dive bombing was super cool! The bird just tucks its wings in and falls out of the sky, going straight into the water after baitfish. Wonder if them birds ever get chomped by a shark or something. We also saw one lonely penguin paddling around the deep blue sea… landscape I notice is really quite rugged… {RACHEL ONG! THOUGHT OF YOU HERE after all, you’re miss ODAC =P}

Something that Singapore doesn’t have is clear and clean water… we could see the colour of the fish when it was still beating its tail and doing circles under the boat about 5-10 meters below the surface! Actually, in my opinion for the half day’s fishing, $100 was well worth it. I may one day forget how much I paid, but I wont forget how much fun I had, quality remains when the price is long forgotten…anyway Carl’s rates go something like this $100 PP/4 hours snapper fishing, $210 PP/5-6 hours kingie fishing, Carl does marlin too… didn’t ask about that… but I expect it to be expensive.

I tried for Kingfish off the rocks… I did hookup… I sure did… and well, lets just say, I need a new fly line since one of them cut me off real bad… if I ever make this trip again, I’d bring some of my own tackle… like my pro gear 450 reel and a jigging rod and my 8-17 spinning set… they would have worked like a real charm!

We ate fillets from the 10lbs fish for lunch at Sally’s- it was very good but very filling… The pretty waitress gave us many types of sauces, Thai chili, tomato, cold slaw flavour, light mustard, white wine and 2 other unknowns… For first time, I drank a beer at lunchtime [Stella- memories of the Rev & Cambridge]! Sally’s, which is a restaurant has very nice food, nicely cooked, tasty but not your big plate small food thing… we actually went there for 2 meals and would have gone for a third one but it was closed.

Anyway, we walked around Russell after lunch and i got rather tired, so I walked back to motel early. While picking up my fishing vest and turning it upside down, my point and shoot camera fell out of the biggest pocket at the back! I’m so relieved!!!! I celebrated by going down to the beach and the wharf and Swoff-ed off there, which is why I need a new bonefish taper for my 9wt rod… anyway, at the wharf, I had a short fish with my Winston BII-Mx 6wt, caught some livies, spooked some mullet and chatted with some locals, one from Alaska, sailed to NZ [a guy]… and Kelly, and her husband Travis. Kelly and Travis live up in Russell… one meets all sorts of people on holiday… Kelly’s dad is a fishing guide in Rotorua, and I might call him if I need a guide in Rotorua or on my next trip here. I also saw 2 very pretty girls who were diving/jumping off the wharf and swimming around… not the safest place but all in good fun I suppose. Russell is such a friendly and relaxed place! haha… Bing Xi- if u were still head prefect, and we were here, I think Ivan, Thanapon, Joel & I would’ve thrown you in all in good fun especially because there were some jelly fish swimming around!

The weather here is crazy… when you pull out the 9weight, the wind dies and u think, its 6weight time… if you’ve got the 6weight, the wind flexes its muscles and shows you who’s boss…

We’ll be Driving to Kawakawa airport tomorrow to get the new GPS… shouldn’t take more than 1.5 hours… don’t have to worry a thing about putting more mileage on the Toyota corolla hatchback since its rented… what a good feeling Damn!!!!! I’m fried like a lobster!!! Forgot the white war paint [sunblock]… gotta do damage control with lotion… Petrol is expensive in this quiet little town… ½ tank was $40! Shit… this is almost Singapore pricing… I better stop complaining =P Can’t wait for mum to get here on Wednesday and to meet up with Uncle Mike on tuesday and get myself trout fishing on thursday…I think its just going to be 1/2 day or maybe 1 in north Island of trout-ing… there are 2 reservoirs up here in the north, doubt its great… weather here’s quite hot and trout don’t exactly love heat! Well Mum’s promised lots of trout fishing in the south island so we’ll see how we get on. Man I did a lot today and this is a super long entry… photos to follow!


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